For years, Margarita Höhenrieder was searching for the authentic sound of Frédéric Chopin's piano works. Which instrument of its time most convincingly reflected Chopin's music? Chopin himself had given the answer in 1831: "Pleyel's instruments are the non plus ultra"!The choice for the recording therefore fell on a Pleyel fortepiano, built 1848 in Paris and expertly restored using historical materials and methods. It is absolutely identical in construction to the instrument that Chopin owned, and thus represents an authentic sound testimony. For acoustic reasons of the sound of the original instruments, the Oberstrass Church in Zurich (1st Piano Concerto) and the Vienna Musikverein in Vienna (2nd Piano Concerto) were chosen as recording venues.

The orchestras "La Scintilla" conducted by Riccardo Minasi and the "Wiener Akademie" conducted by Martin Haselböck also played on historical instruments. We hear in each case the historical versions by Jan Ekier. Margarita Höhenrieder's careful recreation of the authentic Chopin sound gives the listener highly interesting insights into music history.

Following the success of Jonathan Phillips’ debut release, Bach: Tranquillity, Divine Art brings you his carefully curated selection of Chopin’s finest ballades and nocturnes. This selection naturally follows Phillips’ debut as Chopin himself was known to be strongly influenced by Bach. Recorded to replicate a “live” performance, Jonathan recorded two takes, deliberately avoiding all the usual editing, in an effort to communicate his love of these pieces as intimately as possible. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, Jonathan’s Concerto experience is considerable, with over 100 performances including concertos by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Schumann. Jonathan worked with Tamás Vásáry who recommended him to take part in the 1990 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. Since then, Jonathan has broadcast for the BBC, Russian and Italian and Swedish TV and radio, and given recitals all over the UK, Europe and former Soviet Union. Jonathan was interviewed by John Humphries and played live on Radio Four’s Today programme following a full-page feature article in the Guardian Arts Section about the preparation and performance of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto he gave in London in 2003. Bach: Tranquillity, Jonathan’s debut album from Divine Art was released in May 2023 receiving much praise and described by Classic FM’s Katie Breathwick as “a little drop of heaven”.

From long form to short form: that seems to be the voyage Jean-Nicolas Diatkine leads us in his new CD, from Sonata no. 3 to the 24 Preludes. Yet this impression is partially deceptive. Granted, these preludes are miniatures, however they also form a whole twice as long as the sonata, when considered in their totality. Hence the work overcomes confrontation between fragment and whole, between unity and diversity. Yet a first paradox of this magisterial work is that this consistency is nonetheless varied and complementary in style – so much so that certain imaginative performers have foisted evocative titles on each prelude. The second paradox is in its title. Even though the genre is clearly defined, a ‘prelude’ must always pose the question of what it is a prelude to. And yet notwithstanding restricted dimensions, it allows us to wonder about the infinite because, even ended, narrowly circumscribed, and signed off, it remains inconclusive, suspended like an introduction to which no development follows.

Without doubt, the denomination ‘prelude’ is interesting partly because we have no ready answer to the question of what a prelude really is a prelude to, which obliges us to rephrase the question. From this perspective, Jean-Nicolas Diatkine’s version of the preludes is neither a performance (although literally speaking it is one), nor a demonstration, but possesses rather a quality that may seem unreasonable: spontaneity. This interpreter’s spontaneity is not an intrusion of his own self into the composer’s ideas, nor substituting a hermeneutic inspiration to that which gave rise to the work. No, his spontaneity is the clear-sighted audacity to believe in interpretation where a musician can be so immersed in a piece (or in 24 for that matter), as to take the liberty of showing the listener what the work has revealed to him, what it has opened him up to.

This second and final volume of Chopin’s Mazurkas by Peter Jablonski includes the composer's Mazurkas Nos. 30-51 alongside six posthumous mazurkas. For Chopin, the Mazurkas became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last, it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life. Similarly, Chopin’s Mazurkas have followed Peter Jablonski throughout his entire career as a pianist in nearly every solo recital. This album also includes Chopin’s final composition that was written just few weeks before his death, the Mazurka No. 49 in F minor (1849).

Ekaterina Litvintseva began playing the piano at the age of four; and studied music from 1994 to 2001 at the Children's Music School in the remote Russian town of Anadyr; on the Bering Straits. At 15; her family moved to Moscow; and she attended the State Chopin Music School. Having since moved to Europe; she has become much admired for her performances and recordings of Romantic classics by Chopin; Brahms and Rachmaninoff; though she has also explored the work of lesser-known composers from the period such as the Croatian pioneer Dora Pejacevic (PCL10226). The present release marks her second recording of the Chopin concertos; made in the Czech town of Pardubice in October 2022; and it completes her recorded survey of the composer’s works for piano and orchestra after the Piano Classics album of the lesser-known Variations on Mozart; Fantasia; Krakowiak and Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise.

Litvintseva has extensive experience of working with conductor Vahan Mardirossian: ‘We are a perfect team,’ she says. ‘For me; if you want to express your feelings in the deepest way as a pianist; you have to learn the music of Chopin. This is a unique opportunity for me; being able to re-record the concertos six years later; and I have re-thought many aspects of my interpretations. I think I have something to say in this music. It flows so naturally; and it’s written in a brilliant style shared by many other composers of Chopin’s day; but only he could also bring such poetic expression to the brilliance. My job is not to destroy the music with artificial intervention; but to let it flow through my mind and through my hands. I simply want listeners to be touched by this music.’

This refreshed Chopin Edition from Brilliant Classics retains many of the definitive recordings from its predecessor of 2015, but boasting some exciting updates. The Concertos and piano concertante music are consolidated in a bright new cycle from Czechia, recorded last autumn by Siberian superstar Ekaterina Litvintseva and the KFPar under Mardirossian. Schmitt-Leonardy’s sonatas are joined by No. 1 – recorded late in 2015, and therefore just missing inclusion in the previous edition – bringing the complete cycle under his fingers. Alwin Bär’s own Scherzi performances are reunited with his iconic 1998 recording of the Barcarolle, Fantasy and Berceuse. The Études are featured in a stunning complete cycle recorded in 2014 by the phenomenal Chopinist and 2023 OPUS KLASSIK double-nominee Zlata Chochieva. Finally the complete Nocturnes are given over to another noted young Chopin interpreter: the 2018 Geza Anda winner Claire Huangci, who recorded the set two years earlier, in 2016.

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In 2015 Brilliant Classics issued a complete Chopin edition culled from both original productions and licensed recordings from other labels, and featuring a variety of musicians. The label’s revised 2023 Chopin edition retains roughly two-thirds of the contents, while substituting about six CDs worth of alternative performances. Is it “new and improved”? Mostly yes. Here is a rundown of the contents:

Discs 1 & 2: The 2015 Chopin box featured Eva Kupiec in the two concertos (amazingly conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski), with Abbey Simon in the other concerted works. Here we have less individual yet elegantly transparent performances of the entire Chopin piano/orchestra oeuvre with Ekaterina Litvintseva, supported by Vahan Mardirossian leading the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice.

Discs 3 & 4: The well-played chamber works with violinist Duccio Ceccanti, cellist Vittorio Ceccanti, and pianist Simone Gragnani are held over from 2015. So are Anna Haase’s slightly tremulous yet heartfelt Polish songs, superbly accompanied by Lucius Rühl.

Disc 5: Zlata Chochieva’s Etudes count among my top five recommendations in these works, wisely replacing Alessandro Deljavan’s mannered and overloaded readings.

Disc 6: As before, we have Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy’s intelligently paced and imaginatively detailed Ballades and Impromptus.

Disc 7: Folke Nauta’s broad and sonorous readings of the standard seven Polonaises are back, along with his rather underplayed Andante spianato e Grande polonaise.

Disc 8: The youthful Polonaises plus unimportant minor works like the Bourées, the Largo in E-flat, and the Fugue again turn up in Alessandra Ammaro’s splendid and mindfully virtuosic renditions.

Disc 9: The label replaces Fred Oldenburg’s good, workmanlike recording of the First sonata with a superior version from Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy, while retaining the latter’s wonderful Second and Third sonatas. Recently I compared his recording of the Second sonata’s strange Finale next to those of Horowitz and Rubinstein, and actually found Schmitt-Leonardy’s creative inflections more engaging (sound clip).

Disc 10: In place of Ivan Moravec’s Four Scherzos (originally issued by Dorian), we have Alwin Bär’s scintillating 1998 cycle, coupled with his equally compelling Fantasy in F minor and Barcarolle, along with a rather fussy Berceuse.

Disc 11: A hodgepodge of performances. I raved in detail about Schmitt-Leonardy’s reference-worthy Op. 28 Preludes when they first came out. Paolo Giacometti shines in the C-sharp minor Prelude Op. 45, Oldenburg serves up the Three Ecossaises quite well, while Marian Mika plays two versions each of the Waltz in F minor Op. 70 No. 2 and the Funeral March Op. 72 No. 2 using alternative texts.

Discs 12 & 13: Rem Urasin’s Mazurka cycle evokes the high rhetoric and subjectivity of pianists like Jean-Marc Luisada and Andrew Rangell, minus their eccentricity. Just don’t expect lightness, humor, or snappy embellishments.

Discs 14 & 15: Claire Huangci’s rippling and graceful pianism in the Nocturnes differs from the seasoned drama of the Earl Wild cycle that appeared in the 2015 box. The Duo Pianistico di Firenze’s Rondo Op. 73 and Variations in D fill out CD 15.

Disc 16: Alessandro Deljavan works overtime trying to emulate the great Romantic pianists, yet his lurching phrasings and contrived voicings throughout the Waltzes often belabor the obvious and fail to ring true. The piano itself sounds poorly regulated, and doesn’t always hold its tuning.

Disc 17: Frank van de Laar basically picks up the slack, playing the Rondos, the Variations brilliantes Op. 12, the Bolero Op. 19, the Allegro de concert Op. 46, and the Tarantella Op. 43 with plenty of finesse and good taste, if not quite matching Vladimir Ashkenazy’s ebullience.

For its attractive price tag and overall consistency (have Rubinstein’s Waltzes and Mazurkas handy, though!) Brilliant Classics’ 2023 Chopin Edition holds its own alongside similar multi-artist complete Chopin collections on other labels featuring bigger names. It should appeal to general music lovers just getting started with Chopin’s music who wish to take a deep dive into the composer’s oeuvre.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

This is the tenth release in APR’s ongoing French Piano School series which aims to present important recordings from the often-forgotten pianists who represent the very distinctive French style of playing in the first half of the 20th century. Were it not for the chronic illness which dogged him after service in WW1 and led to his premature death, Robert Lortat (1885–1938) would undoubtedly have recorded more and been remembered as one of the greatest French pianists of the 20th century. He performed a wide repertoire, including much Fauré and Debussy, magnificently, but Chopin was central to his art. He first performed the composer’s complete works from memory in five concerts in 1912 and his only recordings, presented here complete, are of Chopin. Lortat was only the second pianist to record Chopin’s complete etudes, after the Backhaus cycle of 1928 (on APR6026), and that they preceded Cortot cycle shows the esteem with which Lortat’s playing was held in France. When they have been presented before, Lortat’s recordings have suffered from very poor transfers from the original 78s. We hope these new transfers, by Mark Obert-Thorn, cast them in a new and much improved light.

Chopin’s melodic inventiveness emerges in the piano, as the soloist repeats the main themes before introducing virtuoso figurations and ornaments. - Interlude (Profil)

After the big success with Bach, Viviane Chassot presents her favourite accordion pieces by Chopin, Satie, Yann Tiersen, etc.

With his Children's Pieces for Adults, Georgian composer and pianist Nodar Gabunia created an eight-part piano cycle in 1987 in the wake of such pedagogically oriented collections as Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Children's Album op. 39, Béla Bartók's For Children Sz 42, or Dmitri Kabalevsky's Piano Pieces for Young Players op. 27, to name but a few. Musical images of childhood had long been a popular topos, which probably found its culmination in Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen op. 15. Those character pieces, however, were not intended for children's hands, but were, in Schumann's own words, "reflections of an elder for elders," not actual children's pieces. The composition of the 24 Préludes op. 28 goes back to the years 1835/36, and in them the admiration that Frédéric Chopin had for Johann Sebastian Bach is evident. With this masterpiece, which gives the character piece "Präludium" or rather "Prélude" to its first and probably highest climax, the composer took up Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and its sequence of 48 preludes and fugues not only in formal aspects, but also in terms of their constructive and material condensation, inspiring composers who followed him in time, such as Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Karol Szymanovsky, but also Claude Debussy or Dmitri Shostakovich, to write comparable collections.

The pianist Anna Zassimova offers us a musical journey through most of Chopin’s creative periods, bringing together miniatures and some larger scaled, highly structured works. We can thus follow the composer’s stylistic evolution: slightly whimsical at first, then works that are often tragic and violent, evolving in his final years towards great luminosity and relative calm.

Highlights of this recital include the Ballades Nos 2 and 4, the Mazurkas, Op. 41 and Op. 50 and the Scherzo No. 4 in E major. The mazurkas can be seen as a kind of diary that Chopin kept throughout his life as an artist, reflecting his deep-rooted attachment to Poland. In them, folklore was entirely recreated and stylized. Considered the finest of Chopin’s creation and among the most representative of romantic music, the Ballads are pure music in its finest form. Without any specific programme, they are said to have been inspired by the poetic ideas of one of his friends, the poet Adam Mickiewicz. Finally, the Scherzo has an almost fairy-tale, luminous atmosphere, although there are more passionate and intense moments, and it thus appears close to the character of the scherzo as it was once conceived.

The two early concertos of Chopin are repertoire works, deservedly so, for their prodigious synthesis of virtuoso finesse and lyricism. However, the composer’s music for piano and orchestra does not stop there: he produced a quartet of standalone concertante pieces, each on the scale of his concerto first movements, which once were recorded as fill-ups to the concertos but have been neglected in recent years. The Russian pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva redresses this neglect with a beautifully polished new album of all four pieces, for which she receives warmly idiomatic support from the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of Pardubice, on an intimate scale which the composer would have recognized (and preferred).

Chopin wrote his variations of Mozart’s ‘La ci darem’ as a prodigally talented teenager, a composition exercise for his teacher back in Warsaw. While cast in the popular style of its time – a grand introduction for a popular operatic melody, elaborated with pianistic sleights of hand for maximum effect, and a rousing finale – the piece is inspired with moments of originality that elevate it above contemporary comparison pieces. The Fantasy on Polish Airs and the Krakowiak soon followed, as Chopin was becoming celebrated across Europe as a new star of that new instrument, the piano. The themes in the Krakowiak are Chopin’s own,but their character is designedly Polish – mystic in the Romantic, piano-and-horn-led introduction, then sparkling with gaiety in the main Allegro. The same kind of formal balance is developed in the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Op. 22: it opens with the kind of ethereal melody which would soon become known as inimitably characteristic of Chopin, the dreamer of the piano, preeminent master of his art in the generation after Beethoven at translating a poetic consciousness and private thoughts into the domain of music.

Young Steinway Artist Han Xiang David Xu is an active Chinese-Canadian concert pianist, who maintains deep interest and extra-musical possibilities in other art forms, including ballet, painting, and Taichi. As a martial art practitioner, Xu is heavily influenced, his MMus dissertation was on Taichi Principals and Piano Performance Techniques. For the past few years, Xu has studied many other styles of martial arts and even received his certificate as a professional instructor for Functional Range Conditioning. To go further with his research on the subject, Xu took another Master of Science degree from Royal College of Music. His thesis is on Experience of Fundamental Martial Arts Training for Young Concert Pianists.

After moving to Vancouver, David began studies with Ian Parker, before eventually graduating and studying at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Professor Rebecca Penneys. He continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, under the tutelage of Pascal Nemirovski, and graduated with high honors. Xu has given several recital tours across China over the past few years, with stops in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Xiamen, and Guangzhou.

His album Sonatas on Canvas received prizes in three categories in the Global Music Award: Classical Solo Piano, Album, and Emerging Artist. He is a prize winner in many competitions including the Rome International Piano Competition, International Music Competition Paris Grand Prize Virtuoso, and Canadian Music Competition. In 2019, he was invited to feature in a new Jaguar commercial for their new XFL sedan. Aside of being a concert pianist he is also an educator. In the past few years Xu has adjudicated in many major international piano competitions.

The French pianist Ismaël Margain, newly signed up with naïve, creates a sensitive and meaningful juxtaposition of two major composers of piano repertoire, Frédéric Chopin and Gabriel Fauré. In spite of its title, this first album by the French pianist recorded under the naïve label is anything but improvised: Ismaël Margain cleverly structures the meeting between two piano geniuses, Frédéric Chopin and Gabriel Fauré, highlighting an “obvious kinship between their styles and in their inspiration,” without confusing or misrepresenting their uniqueness. The impromptu form, common to both composers – four for the first, six for the second –, is the starting point for this logical comparison, organising diversity of atmosphere around similar tonalities.

Dora Deliyska: "It was an exciting and challenging process to record the complex structure of 24 études and préludes. Some of the etudes belong to the most difficult pieces in piano literature, and the préludes have intense musical potential. I decided to record the pieces over a short period of time, in order to keep the spontaneity of the interpretation. I am very thankful to the Teldex Team (René Möller and Jakob Bötcher) and the piano technician Gerd Finkenstein for sharing this musical experience together, and creating an exciting recording.“

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